Thursday, March 15, 2012

OBAMA and GOLDMAN SACHS: PARTNERS IN CRIME - THE LOOTING OF AMERICA UNDER THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT ELECTED WITH THE VOTES of ILLEGALS!

TO WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, ONE MUST COME FROM SOME CRIMINAL WALL ST BANKSTER, OR BE A MEMBER OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!

DO A SEARCH ON THE BLOG FOR OBAMA’S SEC. of LABOR HILDA SOLIS, CECELIA MUNOZ AND HIS “WISE LATINA” LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER SONIA SOTOMAYER!

GOLDMAN SACHS IS A MAJOR OBAMA DONOR!
“Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).” 

 “It confirms from the inside that three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into poverty and homelessness.”

An insider’s view of Wall Street criminality

15 March 2012

Greg Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation Wednesday in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, denouncing the bank's “toxic” culture of avarice and fraud.

Smith headed the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In his column, entitled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” he describes a corporate environment that encourages and rewards big short-term returns gained through the bilking of clients and the general public. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” he writes.

Speaking of one’s clients as “muppets” and describing deal-making as “ripping eyeballs out” are commonplace at Goldman, according to Smith. The way to advance at the Wall Street giant, he writes, is to persuade your clients “to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of,” get your clients “to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman,” and trade “any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.”

The column describes an operation in which laws and regulations requiring financial institutions to deal honestly with their clients and protect their interests are routinely violated. The insider’s indictment of Goldman Sachs highlights a broader process—the criminalization of American capitalism as a whole.

It confirms from the inside that three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into poverty and homelessness.

Education, health care, pensions are being gutted, wages are being slashed and more austerity is on the agenda because there is supposedly “no money.” Corporate profits and CEO pay, meanwhile, are setting new records.

This is an indictment not simply of Goldman Sachs, or even Wall Street alone, but rather the entire economic and political system. Every official institution—the White House, Congress, the courts, the media, the Democratic and Republican parties—is complicit.

Smith’s column was widely reported in the media. NBC Nightly News led its report Wednesday night with the story, interviewing a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission who was brought on to deplore the type of practices described by the former Goldman executive. The ruling class is well aware that popular anger against Wall Street is rising and capitalism itself is becoming increasingly discredited in the eyes of millions of Americans—a process that found an initial expression in the Occupy Wall Street protests. It is concerned that Smith’s piece will further fuel this sentiment.

The practices to which Smith points—and worse—are well known to the Obama administration and the financial regulatory agencies. In April of last year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a 640-page report outlining in detail the fraudulent and illegal practices of major banks that contributed to the September 2008 crash. Fully 260 pages of that report were devoted to Goldman Sachs. They explained chapter and verse, giving dates and naming names, how the bank defrauded its clients by selling them mortgage securities while betting against the same investments, without telling them it was doing so.

The committee also documented the complicity of the credit rating firms and federal regulators in the colossal mortgage Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2007-2008, setting off a new world depression. It cited securities laws that had been violated by Goldman and two other banks it examined, Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, and referred this information to the Obama administration’s Justice Department.

The response of the White House was to do absolutely nothing. Not a single senior bank executive has been criminally charged, let alone imprisoned, for crimes that have devastated the lives of countless millions of people in the US and around the world. Instead, the White House has shielded the corporate criminals.

One Wall Street firm after another—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Countrywide Financial—has been allowed to settle charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission out of court, paying token fines while admitting no wrongdoing. That this continues is seen in the filing Monday in federal court of the sweetheart settlement between five major banks and the state and federal governments of charges arising from the banks’ illegal processing of foreclosures. The banks have merely to pay a combined fine of $5 billion for illegally throwing thousands of families out of their homes, with no admission of wrongdoing. In return, they get the quashing of state investigations that threatened to result in tens of billions in damages and fines.

Not only does the Obama administration protect the Wall Street criminals, it includes their representatives among its top personnel. To cite some examples:

* Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, is the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

* Dianna Farrell, former financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, is deputy director of the National Economic Council.

* Jacob Lew, Obama’s chief of staff, was a top executive at Citigroup. He follows two other bankers chosen by Obama to head his White House operations—former JPMorgan executive William Daley and former Chicago investment banker Rahm Emanuel.

The criminalization of the American corporate-financial elite cannot be separated from the capitalist system itself. It is the product of a decades-long process of crisis and decay, in which the ruling elite has increasingly separated its wealth-making from the production of real value.

Manufacturing and the productive infrastructure have been decimated, while financial manipulation and speculation have come to dominate economic life. The working class has suffered a catastrophic decline in its social position at the same time that a parasitic financial aristocracy has come to exercise a de facto dictatorship over the political system.

Like all aristocracies, the American financial elite will not accept any infringement of its wealth and power. The working class must break its grip by mobilizing its strength in opposition to both parties of Wall Street and fighting for the establishment of a workers’ government and socialist policies, beginning with the nationalization of the banks and corporations and their transformation into public enterprises under the democratic control of the working people.

Andre Damon and Barry Grey

The author also recommends:



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OBAMA IS THE BIGGEST CON JOB IN AMERICAN HISTORY!

 “Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”

HE PUNKED US GOOD WITH HIS “CHANGE”, THEN SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH ALL OF BUSH’S ARCHITECTS FOR WALL ST BAILOUTS AND NO REAL REGULATION, LIKE TIM GEITHNER, AND ALL THE MOST CORRUPT DEMS OF HIS PARTY, LIKE DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND HILARY CLINTON!

AFTER SERVICING HIS BANKSTERS, HE’S TURNED HIS ADMINISTRATION INTO A SUBSIDIARY OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!

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In what was billed by the White House as a major speech on the economy, President Barack Obama on Tuesday combined a potted review of American history with half-truths and lies in an attempt to present himself as a fighter for social equality and critic of Wall Street.

Obama, who has spent nearly three years in the White House single-mindedly defending the interests of the financial elite, has in recent weeks adopted this populist persona with the aim of derailing the emergence of social protest, in the form of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and seeking to channel it behind his reelection campaign.

The speech was notable only for its unbridled cynicism. As always, Obama proceeded from the premise that the American people are infinitely gullible and suffer from collective amnesia with regard to the record of his administration.

Yet under his watch, not a single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator has been prosecuted, let alone convicted.



OBAMA IS NOTHING BUT BUSH’S THIRD CORRUPT TERM!



In every aspect of domestic and international policy, Obama has continued and escalated the policies of his Republican predecessor. He has gone beyond Bush in slashing social programs, waging aggressive war, and attacking democratic rights—including officially ordering the assassination of American citizens.



Obama plays the populist card

8 December 2011

In what was billed by the White House as a major speech on the economy, President Barack Obama on Tuesday combined a potted review of American history with half-truths and lies in an attempt to present himself as a fighter for social equality and critic of Wall Street.

Obama, who has spent nearly three years in the White House single-mindedly defending the interests of the financial elite, has in recent weeks adopted this populist persona with the aim of derailing the emergence of social protest, in the form of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and seeking to channel it behind his reelection campaign.

Typical of such carefully staged events, the site of Obama’s remarks—Osawatomie, Kansas, where Theodore Roosevelt gave his 1910 “New Nationalism” speech—was chosen for its symbolism. By wrapping himself in the mantle of Roosevelt’s Progressive Era reform agenda, Obama hoped to lend credibility to his improbable pose as a man of the people and opponent of the moneyed interests.

The speech was notable only for its unbridled cynicism. As always, Obama proceeded from the premise that the American people are infinitely gullible and suffer from collective amnesia with regard to the record of his administration.

Reviewing the events that led to the financial crash of 2008, Obama declared: “We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or even sometimes understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets—and huge bonuses—made with other people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all…

“It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we’re still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs and the homes and the basic security of millions of people—innocent, hardworking Americans who had met their responsibilities but were still left holding the bag.”

This is a fair description of what amounts to a criminal conspiracy against the people of the United States and the world, carried out by a financial oligarchy that exerts absolute power over the political system. A bit further on Obama declared his commitment to a country where “everyone plays by the same rules.”

Yet under his watch, not a single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator has been prosecuted, let alone convicted. On the contrary, the president has handed them the keys to the national treasury and tailored his policies to enable them to continue their speculative activities and make more money than ever.

The fury of the state has been reserved for those who have sought to protest against the plundering of society by the financial elite and the resulting growth of poverty, unemployment and inequality. They, for the most part student youth, have been assaulted by baton-wielding police in riot gear, packing rubber bullets and using pepper spray. The protesters have been arrested in the thousands. Obama, with his silence, has signaled his support for these attacks, carried out for the most part by Democratic mayors.

Obama strained to present his policies as diametrically opposed to those of the Republicans. After the worst economic crisis in eighty years, he said, the Republicans “want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess.”

This from a president who has made “bipartisanship” the watchword of his administration and done his best to restore credibility to the Republicans after they were repudiated in the 2008 election that brought him to power.

In every aspect of domestic and international policy, Obama has continued and escalated the policies of his Republican predecessor. He has gone beyond Bush in slashing social programs, waging aggressive war, and attacking democratic rights—including officially ordering the assassination of American citizens.

After attributing the entire blame for the deregulation of big business and the growth of inequality to the Republicans, ignoring the fact that these processes proceeded apace under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, Obama declared that his solution began with “making education a national mission.”

This is yet another example of shameless hypocrisy from a president who has adopted the education program that was previously the province of the Republican right, and spearheaded an unprecedented assault on the jobs and conditions of teachers and the very principle of public education.

Lodged within the fog of populist phrase-mongering were code words inserted in the speech—verbal winks and nods—to reassure Wall Street: “the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history… It’s not a view that says we should punish profit or success… business, and not government, will always be the primary generator of good jobs… This isn’t about class warfare.”

With tens of millions out of work and new reports each week detailing record levels of poverty and inequality, Obama declared that capitalism has “led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.”

His invocation of Theodore Roosevelt was preposterous on two counts. First, Obama is not proposing the slightest measures to address social inequality, unlike Roosevelt, who, under conditions of emerging class battles and the growth of the socialist movement, advanced a significant bourgeois reform policy, including a progressive taxation system, unemployment compensation, and laws to restrict child labor and establish minimum wages.

Second, Obama falsifies history. These reforms were not showered on the people by benevolent presidents or bosses, they were extracted from the ruling class through mass struggles, involving millions of workers in sit-down strikes and general strikes that rocked entire cities and defied the murderous violence of the employers and the state.

In his 1910 speech, Roosevelt warned, “If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution.” Over the next half century, the American ruling class was forced, kicking and screaming, to adopt measures that lessened social inequality precisely to avoid revolution.

As is now clear, those concessions to the working class were not permanent. Precisely the failure of the labor movement, due to the treachery and pro-capitalist orientation of the trade union bureaucracy, to break from the Democratic Party and build an independent socialist movement disarmed the working class and allowed the ruling class to wage a counteroffensive.

Obama and the entire bourgeoisie are now seeking to utilize the economic crisis to repeal the 20th century and destroy all of social gains of the working class.

For all his pseudo-populist bluster and his invocation of an earlier period of progressive reform, Obama could offer no serious measures to address the social crisis. His only concrete proposal was passage of an extension of his payroll tax deduction—a measure that is striking only for its hopeless inadequacy. It is fundamentally reactionary to boot, since it will allow corporations to reduce their Social Security taxes, thereby draining the government benefit fund for seniors.

The president’s central focus is to join with the Republicans in shredding what remains of the social safety net. “To reduce our deficit,” he boasted, “I’ve already signed nearly $1 trillion of spending cuts into law and I’ve proposed trillions more, including reforms that would lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.”

We will leave it to the professional apologists for the Democratic Party, from the New York Times to the affluent upper-middle class types who occupy the offices of the Nation, the AFL-CIO trade union apparatus and various pseudo-left groups to try to paint in “progressive” colors what has turned out to be the most right-wing administration in modern American history.

For our part, the Socialist Equality Party in the US will do everything in its power to expose those trying to hoodwink the working class with identity politics and the hoary myth of the “lesser evilism.” The fight for social equality means the fight for socialism and the independent political mobilization of the working class to take political power in its own hands.

Jerry White


Copyright © 1998-201

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 “Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”


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Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses




BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY





Editorial Reviews

Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?

Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.

Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:

* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics

If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.

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Praise for Obamanomics

“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author

“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama

“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul

“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guideto American History

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·         Hardcover: 256 pages

·         Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1596986123

·         ISBN-13: 978-1596986121

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